No, understood Elf, I should have taken your name out of the quote box there.

I am as excited as anyone by the direction Behringer are going with this - it does look like they want to move beyond copying into innovation. I also think they are going to make Roland look pretty silly in the near future. I’ll rephrase that, more silly than they already have done, with their 101 and 808 clones.

But credit where credit is due for actually driving the low cost analogue market, one model at a time... > > Korg!

Well, they did add analogue voices to the JD-Xa and Xi, which nobody ever seems to talk about. I've no doubt even if Roland stuck 8 of those voices in the Jupiter X case, people would still find something to grumble about. ;)

The boutiques have their market, for sure, but I for one have been awaiting the Behringer RD-8. The TR-8s is a good enough machine, but what I do relies quite a lot on the wonkiness of analogue, so as good as the emulations are, I find they need more work to fit in. It'll be interesting to compare the RD-8.

I found this quote from Korg big cheese Katoh-san from quite a few years ago which I thought was interesting - “We are a young company that started nearly twenty years ago and we have maintained the announcement of a steady flow of original world leading products since our formation. We developed the first Rhythm Machine, the first synthesizer, and the first mass market tuner in Japan.

We never resort to imitation and we would consider taking the fruit of other people’s efforts without doing our own development as something utterly inexcusable. We place our emphasis of free creativity and we are constantly pursuing excellence without chasing after rainbows.” - Tsutomo Katoh, Korg President & Founder, 1980.

I'm just trying to get my head around this whole concept of synth recreations and the compromises people will accept to have even a recreation of the original.Just imagine if you applied this to classic cars...

The new Berrari F50 designed to give you the exact performance and feel of the original, but certain "new features" have been implemented to fit in with current market preferences and parts availability.....size has been considerably reduced to allow parking on restricted desk-tops, also, a far less polluting and enviromentally friendly 1.4 litre 4 cylinder hybrid engine has been fitted, we think the savings in weight over the original 4.7 litre V12 are considerable, and will enable sharper more precise handling during those difficult to play Rick Wakeman solos.Along with comprehensive engine management options controllable via Midi and USB, you'll agree, that this recreation could become a classic in its own right.

Many supercars used to have a Ford V8. The easiest way out to get some muscle in there. Today, Nissan (or Mitsubishi?) is testing a 1,5 liter four cilinder at Le Mans. The thing makes 400 HP, without even going into crazy high RPM.

It's enlightening. From the gimmick, (the pickle) to the interesting. And the interesting is that any gear can do, if you're creative. Sylvia's even got an AKG C1000 and found a use for that. The C1000 is one of the most dreaded mics on the interwebs.

It shows that it isn't the gear you use, but what you do with it.

Of course, a Behringer won't sound exactly the same as it's 50 years old original. Why? Because that original doesn't sound the same as it did when it was new. Besides, I've never come across vintage gear that sounded the same as another one...

Vintage gear sounds great. Because of the way our memory works. We tend to remember the great ones and forget about the bad ones.